Welcome to the Sam & Dan Games Developer Blog! This week we are staring our Fundraiser, we need your help

Cosmoid's Week!

Okay so we are excited for the fundraiser but now let's talk about Cosmoids (previous called Creature Universe TD). Last week I had set my sites to do the PTD2 update and the first level for Cosmoids but I wasn't able to fit it in. This week I will focus my whole attention to Cosmoids to make sure we can start the Early Alpha for it.

Bug Hunts!

I'm focusing on Cosmoids this week but I'm not forgetting about PTD2, we will have a new Mystery Giftand I will also look into several big bugs that PTD2 has. The main one is pokemon randomly changing into other pokemon, losing levels, and having their moves changed. Another big one that I've been hearing about is the pokedex not saving properly. The last one is the Onix Trade having people be suspected of hacking. I'm sure there are plently of more bugs out there but I won't have a lot of time so I'm focusing on the big ones.

Weekly Progress

PTD2 Alpha v1.32.2 Released!

Mystery Gift

Change link in game

Change Graphic in game

Change Server Code

Get link and code from sponsor

Change Blog Links

New Pokemon - Cranidos

Graphics

New Abilities

Mold Breaker

New Attacks

Headbutt

Stats

Move List

Evolutions

Add to Breeding Center

Add to Trading Center

Bug Fixes - push to next release

I want to thank you guys for your support, and I hope we can keep this going! As always let me know what you think!

Welcome to another AMAZING week of Sam and Dan Games! It is me Sam and with my game development partner Dan bringing you the latest news on what we are thinking about and what our goals are for this week. Read on to find this and more out!

Last Week's PTD2 Update
Last week we had a nice little update we got to see more of the story for PTD2. Since PTD2 has such a fast development speed the story is actually made as we go. I try to stay 2-3 steps ahead and I also try to think about how the whole story will end. To me the story is about the evil in each person and how it can come out but also how we can control and stop it. I haven't seen a lot of comments or emails about the story itself, I'm curious to hear what some of you think about it so far. I'm not oblivious enough to know that a good amount of people just skip over all the text and just play the level which is why I tend to highlight very important bits so that even people skipping can get the hints. Next!

Forum Contest
The Fan forum is now the Official PTD forum and it's getting a ton of new members, you should check it out to connect with other fans. If that is not enough then you will be happy to know that the forum is throwing a contest that is giving away shiny mews! Here is a video of Link's Collection http://youtu.be/9xP5Mfohp1o!
If you are interested in the contest go here: http://pandoragaming.co.uk/topic/9801977/1/

Sam's Graphic Edition
So making a game can be a very challenging task. As a game designer you want to test out gameplay ideas as fast as possible. You want to see how your idea looks like when you can actually play it. Usually what I do is that I will think about an idea and I will do my best to visualize the idea in my head. If the idea seems good enough then the next step is to program it into the game and play with it to see if its as good as you thought it was. For PTD2 this process is pretty easy, all of the graphics are already made I just need to cut them out and place them on the right spot. This makes it real fast and easy to try out new ideas and it makes the weekly updates possible. For Creature Universe TD since the graphics are not done then it becomes a lot harder to develop. Also using different languages and frameworks (programming stuff) that I have no experience with can start making simple things harder to do. Good quality graphics take many hours and hours to make. So how can I focus on the gameplay when I'm waiting for graphics and have to deal with programming issues. Well you make your own graphics and you stick with the programming that you know!
The goal here is to make an alpha version of the game that focuses on the gameplay while having what people call "programmer's graphics" in this case we are calling them "Sam's Graphics" so while the nice graphics are being carefully crafted I can still move on with design ideas and development and then at some point start swapping in the finished graphics.

So what does it mean to you? Well as you might have read (or not) before we will be doing some funding to keep PTD2, CUTD and Sam and Dan games alive pretty soon and one of the prizes will be to get access to this Sam's Graphic Edition of the game. You will get the game before anybody else and you get to see how AMAZING I draw! You will be able to give valuable feedback that will help shape the game and you will be helping us continue our work, which is to make games for you to enjoy! Sounds like a win-win! Oh and here is a sample of the title screen :)

Amazing, right?!

Time for the Weekly Progress!

Weekly Progress- Things you want done!
Every week I ask you guys to post what you want to get done for the next week in the blog comments. One of the things that I read a lot is to expand the Pokedex to include a lot of the pokemon that you are getting in the game and on Mystery Gifts. So this week I will start that process with the Generation 1 pokedex being added. Just like when the pokedex came out it will count what you have right now as if you had all the previous stages. For example if you have a shiny raticate it will count as if you also had a shiny rattata at some point. After the first time you log in it will no longer do this and only count what you have with you. So after that if you traded for a shadow Blastoise (not possible yet) it would only count as a Shadow Blastoise in the pokedex but not as a Shadow Squirtle and Wartortle. So pretty much don't worry about it!

For Mystery Gift this week we will have the remaining types: Poison, Rock and Bug to choose from and then I will pick a selection from that for you guys to vote on.

Finally I will be adding part of Route 32. You won't be able to access all of it right away since it is a big route with a bunch of things on it. Instead of rushing it and it being empty I will do it in parts as needed for the story. It will include new pokemon to catch! Something that I want to do for catching these new pokemon is to give them more interesting waves, instead of just a free roam type of level it might be a level that you can lose in but still have things to catch. Very similar to PTD1 levels.

I'm also fixing some critical bugs. The ability Hyper Cutter not showing up properly when you go to switch Trapinch's ability. A problem with Night Shade and a problem with Falkner's dialog showing up when you beat Lugia.

On top of all this I will make the first level when you pick the grass starter for our Creature game using my graphics :)

As I do every week the list below is how I'm doing in all these different areas and if I'm currently working. I update this throughout the week so keep checking back to see how I'm doing.

PTD2 v1.32.1 Alpha Released!

Mystery Gift - Skorupi

Change link in game

Change Graphic in game

Change Server Code

Get link and code from sponsor

Change Blog Links

New Pokemon

Graphics

New Abilities

Battle Armor

New Attacks

Knock Off

Pin Missile

Stats

Move List

Evolutions

Add to Breeding Center

Add to Trading Center

Dunsparce should only show up in waves inside Dark Cave not outside

Added Fearow's missing pokedex description

Sceptile can no longer incorrectly relearn the missing move X-Scissor

PTD2 v1.32 Alpha Released!

Added the New Wild Pokemon to the Research Mode List

Pokedex Upgrade - Adding Generation 1 Pokedex tracking

Client

Server

Wild Dunsparce have been seen wandering around Zubat and Geodude waves in the Dark Cave

Welcome welcome welcome! Triple welcomes for everybody! To another week of Sam and Dan games. My name is Sam and I am your captain for the week.

Latest PTD2 Update
Our last update included a new story level and a new mystery gift along with some balance changes to the game. The level had you helping the monks in the Sprout Tower with their shadow Bellsprout problem. A lot of you have talked about wanting to repeat levels and having done a rematch level for the gym battle I thought it would be cool to have most levels be able to be repeated over and over in a more challenging versions of that level. The first time you play the levels they will be tuned to what I'm expecting the skill of the player will be when they reach that level from the beginning so I'm not expecting them to have pokemon over level 12 at that point. The rematches should provide with more challenge yet aren't meant to be impossible.

Official PTD Forum
So the guys over at the PTD Fan forums thought it would be a great idea if instead of being a fan forum they could become the official PTD Forum and I think considering the Avatar Chat is no more that this is a good idea. I encourage you guys to go there. I will also be working with them to make contest and special events on the forum. They will have a trading chat (if they haven't made it already) and it is moderated! Check it out http://pandoragaming.co.uk

User Choices: Who should fight?
I talked about letting you guys choose more things for the game and so here we are. On this next story level there will be a chance for either Ash, Gary or Silver Jr to fight in an important battle. Which one do you think should do the battling? You only have one day to vote so that I will have enough time to work on the level.

Creature Universe TD - Gauntlet Preview
For our CUTD we got to the point when we wanted to figure out how the character in the game would capture creatures and how he will be able to use his different abilites. Kevin one of our artist came up with a cool way of making all these things happen. Introducing the Gauntlet!

Kevin's Concept Images for the Gauntlet

This Gauntlet will serve as your pokedex, pokeballs, and more!

Weekly Progress
Last week I asked you guys what you wanted to be worked on. A good amount of you wanted to see more story, and the soft cap increased. A lot also wanted the buildings filled up but there is a reason why they aren't that has to do with the story so they will fill up at the right time. So there will be a new story level and a soft level cap increase to 16. This will bring 11 new moves into the game. I'm also tossing a critical bug fix into the breeding center. On top of that we will have a mystery gift.

Alpha v1.31.1: Released!

Mystery Gift - Out now!

Change link in game

Change Graphic in game

Change Server Code

Get link and code from sponsor

Change Blog Links

New Pokemon- Trapinch

Graphics

New Abilities

Hyper Cutter

Stats

Move List

Evolutions

Add to Breeding Center

Add to Trading Center

Making it no longer possible to put your pokemon to breed if you only have 2

Alpha v1.31: Released!

Story Level

Concept & Script

Intro

Ending

New NPC Character Graphic

Dialog

Level Background

Level Layout

Enemy Attacks

Enemy Abilities

Rematch Battle

Fixed a bug that show attack numbers as critical hits (yellow color) even if they were not critical hits

Soft Level Cap Increase to 16 - 11 new moves!

Bug Bite

Magnitude

Night Shade

Helping Hand

Reflect

Feint

Safeguard

Twineedle

Hyper Fang

Fury Cutter

Mist

That's all your captain has for you this week, keep checking back to see how I'm doing on the update. Thanks and as always let me know what you think!

Happy New Years! Welcome to the second full year of Sam and Dan Games! I'm personally very excited about his year. I'm looking forward to Creature Universe TD having it's first releases (in a few months), I'm looking forward to more PTD2, and just doing what I love to do which is make games for all of you!

Thanks!
I can't say this enough but without you guys we couldn't be doing this at all! Soon we will call on you guys to help us keep going. This month (I hope) we will be doing a fundraiser with some pretty slick prizes for donating. Dan and I are working on what the different prizes will be; one of my favorite prizes is being able to have some of the Creature Universe Starters on your PTD2 profile! We will also be adding titles in the Trading Center as the prizes for the fundraiser. So under your name it can say like "The Trainer" or "The Breeder" etc. What kind of titles would you guys like to see in the fundraiser? Also what kind of prizes would you like to see? Let me know in the comments below.

The Fate of the Avatar Chat!
Many of you have noticed that the Avatar Chat is no longer in the blog. I took it down a few days ago mainly because since I didn't add moderator options the chat was getting out of control and it wasn't something I wanted to allow to keep happening. While I wished I had enough time to add Moderation options, this wasn't something I could do. I think the Avatar Chat was a fun experiment I wanted to try out and I think it was a success as far as having people be able to talk to each other and move around in an environment. These are the building blocks to an online game that I wish to make some day. So let's give the Avatar Chat a moment of silence. R.I.P Avatar Chat...

New Year's Resolutions!
I don't know about you but I make resolutions every year. This year is even more special since I'm getting married. A lot of my resolutions are about getting ready to be married, cooking more, getting in shape, cleaning more.. Just being more responsible, can't let Zaira (my fiance) do everything! Thinking about these I wrote down a few of the resolutions I had for SnD Games. What were some things that I wanted to change? Hmm.. there were many! Time for a list!

Spend more time polishing content - This one comes from the end of PTD1. Sadly I haven't been organized enough to really follow through with this one. I get really excited about putting a lot of things in the weekly progress list and in the end I don't have enough time for everything and the things that I end up doing are some times rushed. My resolution is to spend more time on content to make it better, even if we get less content right away.

More User Choices - I think at the beginning of PTD1 I was really good about getting you guys involved in what happened in the game but slowly as more and more people started joining us it became harder to really manage all of it but I think I can do better than just letting you guys choose the Mystery Gift. This week I want to hear about what titles, and prizes would be good in the fundraiser.

Realistic Weekly Progress - This one is similar to the polishing one. I want to make the progress list something that I can actually achieve for that week and not something that is impossible. The way I will solve this is by having a private list of things that I want to do and only showing the ones I think I can do for that week in the weekly progress list. I might make the list public and have you guys pick which one to do next in the future.

More Communication - Back when we had only a handful of fans, or even hundreds of fans, I was out there answering comments, replying to emails, my goal was to reply to everything. As the game started to take off it was taking more and more time to reply. Some people wanted to have chats with me, emailing me back and forth. While I really wanted to just chat, it was taking a lot of time away from actually working on the games. As time went by I barely even tried to reply and only went after the most important ones. My resolution is to do more communication.

A lot of these as you might have noticed have a lot to do with organization and time management. This is something that I'm working on in both my professional and personal life. I personally think that life is about trying to keep a balance between all the things you want to do and things you have to do. My hope is to get better at keeping the balance and that maybe talking about it out loud can help one of you also.

Weekly Progress
Now on to the content! This week there will be a mystery gift, at the time of writing this grass seems to be winning and that would mean a grass starter poll! Fun times! Besides the Mystery Gift I want to make a new Story Level with a bit of story this time around and right now I want it to focus on Bellsprout Tower and what is happening there. The last thing will be to make the Zapdos battle a little less intense at that level and also look at the rival fight and tune it a bit more for that stage of the game.

Alpha v1.30.1: Released!

Mystery Gift

Change link in game

Change Graphic in game

Change Server Code

Get link and code from sponsor

Change Blog Links

New Pokemon - Treecko

Graphics

New Attacks

Absorb

New Abilities

Unburden

Stats

Move List

Evolutions

Add to Breeding Center

Add to Trading Center

Story Level - Bellsprout Tower

Monk character

Tower Layout

Tower Map

Intro

Waves

Ending

New Attacks

Bellsprout's Vine Hold

Bellsprout's Razor Leaf

Tune Gym battle, Zapdos and Rival fight to better fit the level and skill of the player at that point in the game

That's all I have for you on this short week. Thanks for stopping by and keep checking back to see how I'm doing on my progress this week. As always, let me know what you think about the fundraiser, and the resolutions. Also what are some of your resolutions for this year? I would love to hear them. Sam out!